Chinese Pictionary

Inspiration

Believe it or not, Chinese Whispers is an authentic Chinese game.
It was based on a cautionary tale whose moral is to warn one not to gossip/spread misinformation.

This Chinese New Year, our game inspired by Pictionary and Chinese Whispers further reinforces this important moral, in the age of alternative-facts, post-truth and fake news. It's also very frustrating and fun to play!

What it does

On the website, you can join a room, spectate a full room, or create your new room.

The game starts when the room is full. First player gets to see a random phrase, and then has to draw something that best describes the phrase in 15 seconds.

You can choose the colour of your stroke, and the canvas also tries to straighten almost-straight lines for a better drawing experience.

You can draw using a cursor, touchscreen, or leapmotion!

The next player sees the previous drawing for a few seconds then has to draw their own image with the same rules.

This repeats until it reaches the last player, who has to then guess the word.

Players that have done their round get to spectate the rest of the drawings!

Challenges I ran into

Line straightening algorithm sometimes fails for small strokes.
Normalising the mouse/leapmotion values so different sized containers can work interchangably.
Combining drawing by touch, drawing by mouse and drawing by leapmotion.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

3 hours sleep

What I learned

it's not that easy

What's next for Chinese Pictionary

-Optical Character Recognition to prevent players from writing the phrase down directly.
-Add more drawing tools to make the experience better.
-Build on top of leap motion and add virtual reality to make a more immersive experience.
-Leaderboards and Galleries to view past saved games.